On Fri, 19 Apr 2002, Chris Luth wrote:
> > Nah, they're separate components. Enlightenment is one of several window
> > managers that can sit on top of X11, as well as one of a smaller number of
> > managers that Gnome can work optimally with (also including Sawfish and
> > some others). Gnome has to have a window manager running with it ("under
> > it"? kinda, not really, but good enough), but you have several to chooose
> > from, including Enlightenment and Sawfish. On the other hand, you can use
> > Enlightenment without Gnome just fine -- for that matter you can use any
> > window manager without also running Gnome.
>
>
> What is Gnome, then, in comparison to X11 and its window managers?
I was worried that someone would ask a question like that :/
By comparison to the other well known graphical systems out there -- Mac,
Windows, BeOS, Amiga, etc -- X11 is extremely sparse. Where the others
provide a complete environment for interacting with the computer, with
things like file managers, interface widgets (windows, icons, menus,
pointers [wimp]), and so on -- X-Windows just provides the framework for
driving such a system.
To get a first pass at a "minimally complete" environment, X11 is designed
to work with window managers, such as Enlightenment or Sawfish, which
provide those WIMP widgets. That's raw, but it's enough to get started.
In order to really flesh things out, and bring an X-based environment on
par with Windows or Macintosh, projects have emerged that try to fill in
the rest of the pieces. KDE is one of them, Gnome is the other, and at
this point it's the only one that can run with OSX. These two projects try
to bring a nicer, more consistent look & feel to the raw X11 interface.
A big part of this is done by providing relatively high level development
toolkits: QT as the basis for KDE, GTK+ (and over it, Bonobo) as the basis
for Gnome. These compare to other high level toolkits like Carbon & Cocoa,
or Windows COM. These toolkits allow developers to contribute towards a
more consistent look & feel across the system (so that menus look the same
everywhere, common items like open/save/cut/copy/paste/help/etc are put in
standardized locations, etc -- things most users take for granted before
they spend five minutes in front of a fancy shmancy Linux workstation and
every application looks different and behaves differently and they can't
cut & paste reliably and they run away screaming in righteous horror.
So. You can use X11 + WindowManager for the rest of your life, and it'll
more or less work, but there's little consistency. Or you can use X11 +
WindowManager + HighLevelToolkit where that HLT is Gnome, KDE, or another
similar suite like that, and things get Much Easier. Among other things
Gnome provides are:
* a centralized configuration manager (like System Preferences
on OSX, or the Windows Control Panel) that, notably, actually
does allow you to configure things system-wide
* taskbars and control panels that can be embedded with applets
(mail watchers, news tickers, weather reports, many others)
* regular access to multiple virtual desktops/workspaces (you
get this without Gnome, but the access here is cleaner)
* more consistent keyboard shortcuts everywhere
* more consistent response to mouse activity everywhere
* development & runtime libraries:
# primary:
+ glib [fundamental basis]
+ GTK+ [gimp toolkit, general purpose graphical library]
+ ORBit [Object Request Broker, similar to Windows DCOM]
+ Imlib [image handling library]
# secondary:
+ libgnome [non gui routines, including config parsers, sound
handling, internationalization, argument parsing, and so on]
+ libgnomeui [gui widgets, icons, dialogs, etc]
+ libgnorba [ORB/CORBA routines, security, etc]
+ gnome-print [self-explanatory?]
+ gnome-xml [self-explanatory?]
+ guile [allows apps to use Scheme as an embedded control language]
+ bonobo [highest level framework, similar to Windows OLE, allowing
e.g. html rendering or graphics in a word processor or mail client]
(Aren't-cha glad I picked up _GTK+/Gnome Application Development_ from the
remainders bin at the local tech book store? ;)
This could all be way more than you're asking, but it's a good question
and worth trying to clarify. High level frameworks like GNOME and KDE are
*much* more ambitious than traditional window managers, but it's hard to
explain why these projects are needed when the services they're trying to
provide is naturally assumed as already being available by anyone used to
a Mac or Windows interface. To the extent that a skilled Mac user would
point at X11 and rightfully say "damn, this sucks", GNOME is trying to
fill in the blanks so everything that Mac user expects will be available.
--
Chris Devers [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Apache / mod_perl / http://homepage.mac.com/chdevers/resume/
"More war soon. You know how it is." -- mnftiu.cc
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